Does your watch keep losing time daily? It could be a big deal in this world where time is money. If your watch keeps losing time, it might mean you keep running late for work, appointments, and outings, which could result in loss of potential income.

So, What Causes A Watch To Lose Time? There are a lot of reasons why your watch loses time. The most likely reason, however, is that it does not have the required amount of power for it to keep functioning accurately. Temperature, magnetism, and shock can also affect your watch’s accuracy.

Do you want to know the exact reason why your wristwatch’s time is not accurate? We have compiled ten reasons why your watch is losing time. You would also learn how to correct this problem.

10 Reasons Why Your Watch Loses Time

Your watch might keep telling the wrong time for several reasons. If you don’t understand the mechanism of wristwatches, you will not see the reason for this failure. Here are ten reasons why your watch keeps losing time;

1. Lack of Maintenance

If you notice that your watch keeps losing time, it might be an indication that it requires cleaning or oiling. If you see that the minute hand kicks backward slightly before moving forward, then that is an indication that the gears have worn out or slipped. A proper servicing and cleaning of the gears would resolve the issue.

2. Old Batteries

An old battery could also cause your watch to lose time. Replacement of the old batteries should resolve the problem.

3. Old Watch

If it is an old watch, then it could start losing time. You can resolve the problem in this case by having professionals replace certain parts of the watch.

4. Magnetism

Magnetic fields from household appliances can affect your wristwatch. If its balance spring gets magnetized, your watch will begin to lose time. You can demagnetize your wristwatch with a watch degasser at home.

5. Automatic Watches

Automatic watches may lose time or even stop working if you do not wear them regularly. For an automatic watch, motion is the heart of the watch. The movement of the wrist activates the winding of the watch. If you don’t wear the watch regularly, it would not have sufficient power to function correctly.

6. Impact

Your watch might have sustained a significant impact. This impact might have caused the last winding of the spring to skip forward.

7. Clinging Strings

If the springs are clinging together, your watch might begin to lose time. This problem is easily fixed by a professional.

8. Altered Spring Key

An impact on the watch may alter the spring’s key which would also cause the watch to lose time

9. Shifted Dials

An impact on the watch can cause the dial to move and create a binding on the digits.

10. Low Power Reserve

Your watch will begin to lose time if the power reserve is running low. If it is a mechanical or automatic watch, you have to wound it.

What To Do If Your Watch Is Losing Time

Like the car engine, which requires periodic servicing and maintenance, your watch engine also requires servicing and oiling to keep functioning correctly.

If you observe that your watch keeps losing time, you should take it to a watch repair shop for thorough cleaning and oiling. This solution applies to both mechanical and quartz watches. Simple regulation of the balance could also fix the problem if it is a mechanical watch. 

For automatic watches, you would need to wound the watch manually. It would keep the watch high on power, which is required for it to function correctly. Even if your automatic watch gets worn daily, you should still manually wind your watch at least twice a week. 

To manually wind your automatic watch, remove the watch from your wrist or its box. Locate its crown and then unscrew it until it is in the first position. Turn the crown in a clockwise direction for about 30 to 40 turns until you feel resistance. Press the crown back in and wear the watch again on your wrist to keep it in motion by your natural wrist movement.

If you don’t want to go through the manual method, you can also keep your automatic watch in motion with a watch winder. However, if you have no previous experience with winding watches, you should give it to a watch repairer to avoid damaging your expensive watch.

However, if it is an old watch, a jewel inspection would be required and then the balancing of the shaft pivots and the spring itself.

Other Related Question

Is There Any Perfectly Accurate Watch?

Watches are indeed one of the most transformative inventions ever made by humans. With every passing year, efforts go into making our timepieces more accurate and sophisticated.

However, we still haven’t been able to achieve a completely accurate watch. Truly watches are getting more accurate. Atomic watches (which is the closest thing to a perfectly accurate watch) seem exceptionally accurate, but it still loses a fraction of second daily.

No device or object that has moving parts can ever attain a hundred percent accuracy. As long as drag, friction, and the laws of physics still apply, these laws limit the ability of an object to function precisely the same way forever.

These laws explain why we can not have a perfectly accurate watch. However, we have almost accurate watches.

Below are three types of watches in descending order of accuracy.

Atomic Watches

Atomic watches are the most accurate timekeeping device available on earth. Atomic watches get regulated by a signal received from an atomic clock. Every day, this signal would reset the watch. An atomic watch is said to lose one second every 100 million years.

Quartz Watches

The next accurate type of watches after atomic watches are quartz watches. Quartz watches lose an average of one second every 30 years

Mechanical Watches

These are the least accurate watches and also the most common type of watch in our world today. The accuracy of mechanical watches varies based on the manufacturing brand. However, even the best and most expensive mechanical watches will still gain or lose at least two seconds a day

You might be wondering why anyone would ever buy a mechanical watch seeing that quartz watches are far more accurate than the mechanical watches. Well, better accuracy comes at a higher cost.

Those who don’t care about the loss of a few seconds daily would instead purchase a mechanical watch, which is much cheaper than a quartz watch.

Conclusion

A lot of factors could affect the accuracy of your watch. You should, however, bear in mind that there is nothing like a perfectly accurate watch. Getting a watch is a trade-off between accuracy and cost.

If you want something not too expensive and you don’t care so much about the accuracy of your watch, then you can go for mechanical watches. If absolute accuracy is what you are after irrespective of cost then, you should think atomic or quartz.